


One Minute to Midnight

by sarasa_cat



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, On The Way To A Smile: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet, Canon-Typical Violence, Demons, Friendship, Gen, Immortality, Monsters, Past Relationship(s), Phone Calls & Telephones, Questions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-01
Updated: 2017-08-01
Packaged: 2018-12-09 13:33:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 19,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11670135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarasa_cat/pseuds/sarasa_cat
Summary: Vincent has always had a difficult relationship with the concept of time.Immediately after the events in Advent Children, Cloud convinces Vincent to take a break from wandering the furthest reaches of the planet's hinterlands. Vincent agrees to temporarily help people in Edge rebuild their lives. Meanwhile, Vincent has spent the past two years searching for answers to questions that he still cannot name, all of those questions revolving around the monsters that haunt him, particularly Chaos. While staying in Edge, Vincent decides what he needs to do.  Luckily Marlene made sure that he carries a phone.A Vincent Valentine POV story told through slice of life scenes and flashbacks as Vincent struggles with immortality, a sense of purpose, and a deep seated fear of Chaos.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TwoCatsTailoring](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwoCatsTailoring/gifts).



> A few bits of this story reference _On The Way To A Smile_ , specifically the Case of Yuffie and Case of Nanaki chapters, although this story doesn't require you to have read either.

The clock that stands still is certain of being right twice every twenty-four hours, while others keep going round continually, and continually they go wrong.

When I was a boy, I read those words while paging through one of my father’s magazines on a Sunday afternoon. At age fourteen I took smug comfort in this form of satire, making me feel as if my narrow frame had sprouted wings, levitating me above humanity’s morass of bombast and conjecture, merely because I saw truth in this quote. It took me years to realize the joke was on me. Whenever I feared others would declare me wrong, I would still myself and act like a stopped clock while I watched everyone else going round and round. That was all I’d do: watch. I would do nothing until chance landed me in the right place at the right time to do or say whatever I presumed was certain. Little did I know that right and wrong shift with the ticking hands of time. Wait long enough and certainty fades into nothingness.

But there was one thing I did not know as a boy of fourteen much less as a man ticking away his frustration at age twenty-seven. It never occurred to me that I could literally become a stopped clock. That time would stop for me for all eternity while I remained conscious of the forward moving world.

 

***

 

When your relationship with time stops, each slice of eternity is marked by waiting. You wait for that exact moment when the position of your frozen hands coincide with the ticking time in the world that spins forward without you.

You wait.

You wait until your frozen self and the spinning world sync up. When that precise moment arrives, supposedly your actions finally matter.

Once you’re removed from time on a human scale, waiting loses its familiar meaning. Blink at the wrong time and you miss that moment of synchronization. And then you wait as you wander. You stare out at the horizon. Something will eventually happen. When you have all of eternity, the word ‘eventually’ just means stop and wait.

The problem with being a stopped clock is that you are indeed stopped. You are anchored firmly in stasis while everything else in the moving world flows forward. Time flows as the lifestream circulates around the planet, carrying everything with it except you. You are no longer part of the moving world.

You aren’t part of the world’s cycles of life.

You become an outside observer.

But here’s the question I have. If your frozen hands point upward toward eternal midnight and suddenly the world’s clock ticks past eleven fifty-nine, what happens next?

This is a question I am not certain I want to answer. Look, I know how it sounds: a bit melodramatic, but I have my reasons for my concerns.

After the first time I fully transformed into Chaos, I vowed never to willingly let that happen again. But, once Chaos was awake within me, a series of changes occurred in my already altered body. Gene regulation pathways triggered the assembly of new molecules. The nerves in my muscles rewired and my reflexes quickened. Unless I kept my mind calm, my body was more susceptible to acting as a creature of instinct. When instinct kicked in, I suddenly leaped incredible heights and moved with an inhuman quickness, a form of speed and movement that hovered on the verge of making an observer’s skin crawl.

Changes also began to appear at a subatomic level. A part of me could phase into a universe of dark plasma almost at will. When this occurred, distances within our material world collapsed. To others it appeared as if I could fly at lightening speed, a scrap of fabric caught in a tornado, a swirling cloud of impossibly fast bats. Whenever I felt myself under extreme duress, the darkness of Chaos pushed into my mind, triggering instincts that urged me to act in ways I didn’t understand.

Even though the mechanisms of Chaos were unpredictable, the results weren’t necessarily evil. The instant I feared for Cloud’s life as Kadaj attacked him in the Forgotten City, my instincts responded faster than my mind could think. It was only after Marlene saw me swirling through the air as the inhuman demon I harbored, that a familiar wave of regret washed through me.

Marlene should not have seen me do that.

But the moment she fearlessly clung to my leg, I realized she did not care.

Once Cloud and Marlene left, I sat at the edge of the once holy lake that Kadaj had polluted. The darkness in my body knew this stagnant foulness, this fraternal twin to the stasis within me. The darkness from Kadaj was known to be an alien infestation whereas mine appeared different. Yet both blocked the lifestream. Both had the power to wound and destroy life.

For two years I had wandered the planet’s outlands like a half wild beast. Now it seemed the hands of the planet’s clock had begun to approach mine. I didn’t know what I needed to do, but instinct told me it was time to find my way to Edge.

 

***

 

I arrived in the center of Edge only to find that I had misread the time on the planetary clock. Neither the planet nor Cloud needed me. The moment it became clear to me that this was Cloud’s battle to fight, all I could do was lend him my moral support. Meanwhile I found myself reunited with a group of people whom I had not seen together since parting with them two years prior.

After Cloud fought with what remained of Sephiroth, people from Edge gathered in a church in the ruins of Midgar’s Sector 5 slum. As their afternoon ticked away into evening, folks drifted back across the wasteland. When Cloud decided to head back to Edge, I followed along so I could say my goodbyes to him and his friends.

That evening Tifa closed Seventh Heaven to outside customers, making our gathering a private affair for friends and family. The atmosphere in the bar felt surprisingly comfortable, so I found a spot in the back of the room and leaned against the wall. I watched people make jokes with each other as they traded stories. All of them had moved on with their lives during the two years that had passed since we last parted as a group. Even though most of them were still searching for something, all of them had settled into patterns and cycles that fit their wants and needs.

What could I say for myself as these old friends came to talk to me? I had travelled the world and when chance arose, I helped others. By happenstance I spent some time with Nanaki. How was I doing? All right.

I thought I had spoken to everyone who wished to speak with me when Cid walked over and clapped a heavy hand on my shoulder. “Come on, sit down. Have a beer.”

I followed him to a table. Tifa joined us.

“So, Vincent, what have you been doing with yourself all this time?” Cid asked.

What could I say? What version of my tale made sense? “Traveling.”

“For two years?” Cid sounded incredulous.

I nodded.

“Was it a nice long vacation? Go anywhere interesting?”

Tifa cupped her glass of beer between her hands. “Vincent knew about the Remnants. He was watching them. Collecting information.”

“Yeah, you really did figure them out, didn’t ya.” Cid drew out a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and tapped one out from the pack.

I didn’t know how to begin describing the dark stasis I had found. “As I traveled, I looked for anything that appeared alien or misplaced. Anything that works in opposition to the planet’s lifestream.”

Cid lit his cigarette and took a drag. “More of that Jenova shit.”

I nodded. “Jenova has corrupted some of the planet’s life but there are other threats — pockets of stagnation that exist as the antithesis of the lifestream’s purpose.”

Cid narrowed his eyes. He puffed on his cigarette rather than say what was on his mind. Eventually he leaned back, raised his voice, and made a joke out of what I had said. “Quite a vacation, Vincent. Next time you should try Costa Del Sol or Wutai for a change.”

“Hey! I heard that!” Yuffie yelled from across the room. The next thing I knew she had squeezed into the booth, wiggling herself into the bench seat until she sat right next to me. She reached across the table and wagged a finger in Cid’s face. “Wutai is far more than a tourist trap for you to pick on!”

“Come on, calm down,” Cid replied. “I just figured you wouldn’t mind having ol’ Vince stop by to see you.”

“Yeah, why didn’t you visit?” Yuffie bumped her shoulder into my upper arm. “But no staying in some overpriced tourist trap for you. Just look me up and if I’m not there, go find my dad. You’re always welcome to stay with us, just like before. Don’t you forget it. We’ll take good care of you and if my dad doesn’t put you to work doing god knows what, I’ll take you materia hunting. Red went with me. You should’ve been with us. We could have used your help and it would have been just like old times.”

“Nanaki told me about your excursion,” I said.

“And he told me about one of the times he met up with you in the middle of a forrest.”

“That he did.”

“Gawd, Vincent, is that the only way people can get in touch with you? Wandering across your path by pure chance in the middle of nowhere?”

I sipped my beer rather than respond.

“You should try doing a better job of staying in touch with everyone.” Yuffie rolled her eyes at me. She dramatically mouthed the words, “Sometimes people worry.”

“I think the brat’s made enough of a point for now,” Cid interrupted. “Vincent or Cloud being lost in their own world has long stopped being news. So, Tifa, how’s Seventh Heaven been treating you?”

Coming from Cid, those words hit too close to home. That moment with Marlene once I got Cloud away from the Remnants still haunted me, especially now that Tifa sat across the table. Had something horrible happened to Marlene because Cloud or I failed to see or protect her in time, I don’t know how I would face anyone in this room. But the image that lodged itself in my mind was something else, something absurd. That young girl had come far too close to seeing me on the verge of fully transforming into a demon, yet that was not what shocked and astonished her. In Marlene’s eyes, I was an inconceivable aberration, not because she had seen me fly like a swirling swarm, phasing between our world and some anti-world of darkness, but because I walked the planet without carrying a phone.

A sudden sharp pain in my ribcage woke an instinct not wholly mine. Before I could think, my hand snatched whatever had stabbed into the right side of my body. I blinked and found myself gripping Yuffie’s boney elbow.

Her shocked wide-eyed stare melted into a mockery of indignation. “At least I brought you back to this planet. So, if Cid keeps plying you with beer, do you ever turn into the fun drunk who is the life of the party or do you just become more ornery?”

I let go of her arm as I suppressed a force that had increasingly shared control of my instincts and then I gave Yuffie the best ‘stop fooling around’ glare I could muster.

She leaned forward and mouthed the words ‘you don’t scare me’ without making a sound. To punctuate her point, she wrinkled her nose and stuck out her tongue.

Someday her incorrigible nature would land her in serious trouble. I only hoped she had better sense when I am not around.

“Fine,” she shrugged. “Next time I’ll warn you before I give you the ninja elbow-knife between the ribs.”

“It hurt.”

“If it didn’t hurt, it wouldn’t be the ninja elbow-knife.” She flashed an overly wide smile and gave me an exaggerated wink.

Yuffie took a slow sip of whatever she was drinking. I took a deep breath before nursing my beer.

“Brat,” Cid said. “Just once could you cut Vincent some slack?”

“I’m fine,” I mumbled.

“Tifa, would you get us another round?” Cid nodded his chin in the direction of the bar.

Tifa smirked as she got up and walked away. Cid leaned back and looked out across the restaurant. In that moment of quiet, I felt Yuffie sneak her hand against my side, her fingers hovering lightly against my shirt. She looked away from me as if she was doing nothing in particular. A faint blue-green glow radiated from her hand.

Yuffie lacked a Cetra’s power for harnessing the fullness of the lifestream’s ability to heal, but the amount she innately manipulated felt as cool as water from a mountain spring. The residual ache between my ribs washed right away. Before she persisted, I discreetly removed her fingers from my side, but only after squeezing her hand in acknowledgement so she did not interpret this as a rejection or a challenge.

Two years ago whenever Aerith or Yuffie harnessed the lifestream to bring back our health in a hurry, I felt a war wage inside my body. None of the others, not even Cloud, experienced the strange discomfort I felt. The part of me that had always been alive craved the nourishment of that healing force while something else begged to devour their energy and rip the newly healed flesh from my bones. The more severely injured my body, the more this darkness ate at my self control until it took most of my conscious thought to hold it at bay. It was bad enough during the first two months we traveled, but after we visited the cave where Lucrecia hid herself, a series of physical injuries triggered Chaos into being. That was when I made these connections and since then my former sense of humanity slowly has sloughed away.

I finished the last of my beer as Tifa returned with a new round for everyone.

Cid raised his glass. “To calmer skies and calmer days,” he said.

We clinked our glasses together. As Yuffie clinked hers against mine, she gave me a surreptitious glance and an impish half-smile.

“I become neither,” I said to her, just before I took a sip.

She wiped a froth of foam from her upper lip. “Neither? Neither what?”

“Neither ornery nor the life of the party.”

She responded with the first honest smile I had seen from her in a while.

That was when I realized how much I had missed her, along with every other person in this room. It pained me to admit how much I missed all of them.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

Tifa insisted I stay with them for a few nights. I respected her offer of hospitality but I nearly refused until Cloud pulled me aside.

“Look,” Cloud said, “you told me that you’ve been helping people as you wander. There are lots of people here in Edge who need help, even more after what just happened. You can stay here. It’s not a problem.”

Tifa’s apartment had a spare guest room but Yuffie had already claimed it. I didn’t mind sleeping on the sofa nor did it bother me if others stayed up late, talking or watching TV. Yuffie had found an old kung-fu movie on channel eleven. She settled into an overstuffed chair and mimicked the actors’ movements. Her mouth provided a steady stream of commentary. After a while Tifa said goodnight and retired. Even Yuffie eventually quieted and nodded off.

During a commercial break Cloud turned to me and said, “Will you ever try forgiving yourself?”

I hmm’ed a noncommittal acknowledgement. What was the point? Nothing I could say to myself would change the way I had been forced to live my eternal stopped clock non-life.

“Not that it would change what you are,” Cloud continued.

I had to give him credit. He had thought through the reasons why I had never bothered to seek forgiveness for my prior sins of inaction.

“Look, Vincent, all I’m saying is that no matter what you are now, you still have to live with yourself. What’s the point of punishing yourself more when you already know that you are living out your punishment?”

“It’s not like I have a choice,” I said. “Life has become nothing but a game of waiting.”

“Then find a way to keep moving forward.”

“That’s what I’ve been doing for the last two years.”

“Were you? Or were you just running away from everyone who knows you?”

“Are you speaking about me or yourself?” I queried, already knowing the answer.

“Look, Vincent, I can only speak for myself.” Cloud paused. “Tell me this. Name one thing that keeps your mind focused on the here and now.”

“Solving problems.”

“Then you’re in luck. Edge has more problems than people here who can solve them.”

“I’ll stay,” I said. “But only for as long as I can.”

Cloud looked at me a bit, assessing what I meant.

“Well, we do what we must,” he said. He got up. “I’m going to bed. Have breakfast with us in the morning. Reeve is meeting with us at noon.”

Cloud walked to the overstuffed chair where Yuffie slept. Before his hand touched her shoulder to wake her, I stopped him. “Let her be.”

Cloud nodded and left.

I pulled at the blanket draped over the back of the sofa and spread it over me as I stretched out. I reached for the TV remote and turned the volume down. Later, after the movie’s credits scrolled across the screen, I turned the TV off. _Click_. And just like that, the room fell into darkness.

That night I fell into a light sleep where dreams mixed with consciousness. The creaks and groans of the apartment’s floorboards became sounds from the house where I grew up, a house in a long forgotten neighborhood beneath the southeastern sector of Midgar’s plate. A car rumbled in the street and then a car door slammed. In an instant, my father’s broad shadow fell against the walls of my mind.

 

I woke up the next morning when Marlene poked the tip of her index finger into my upper arm.

She ran and hid behind the now unoccupied overstuffed chair.

Tifa called out from the next room, “Marlene, tell Vincent breakfast will be ready in fifteen minutes.”

Marlene stood up from behind the side of the chair to make her announcement. “Breakfast will be ready in fifteen minutes.”

“Thank you for letting me know.”

“You’re living with us?”

“For now.”

“Good. I’m going to show you what I’m working on for a school project about Meteorfall. Tifa said you and Yuffie helped evacuate people from the city and—”

“Marlene?” Tifa called from the other room.

“What?”

“Give Vincent a chance to start his morning. Why don’t you go wake Yuffie?”

“Okay!” Marlene shot down the hall, out of view.

Tifa looked through the doorway. “Hope you slept well. You should make a beeline for the bathroom. Once Yuffie takes over, you’ll be lucky if it’s forty five minutes before you have a chance to wash up.”

“Nothing’s changed,” I said as I got up.

“Some things have, but not that.”

 

That was how my day started. After breakfast Marlene informed me that she and Tifa would walk with me to a store down the street where I could by a phone and then I would help them carry vegetables from the green grocer that was two shops further down the road.

And so we went.

“We need to find a phone you like,” Marlene said. “Cloud never answers his. He always makes people leave messages. But if we get you a phone you like, you won’t do that.”

“Sometimes people are busy,” I said.

“Yeah, sometimes people don’t pay attention to others when they should,” Marlene retorted.

“I cannot fault you the truth in that.” I respected Marlene’s forthrightness, and hoped she never outgrow it. I picked up a small silver handset that appeared sturdy and attempted to compare it to a grey handset that sat next to it in the store’s display rack.

“Ooh! Look at this one!” Marlene called out.

Tifa shushed her. “Let Vincent pick what he wants.”

“No! Look at this. This one is _perfect_!”

“Let me see?” I turned around and walked across the store.

Marlene held out a black phone embellished with a design on the back.

“It’s _your_ style,” she announced, “and it has a camera and everything. I think you’ll like it.”

No doubt the girl knew more about today’s technology than I did. “Alright.”

After I paid for the phone, we walked to the green grocer and purchased fresh vegetables. Tifa and I carried them back to Seventh Heaven. My knife skills used to be pretty good so I offered to help with prep, knowing that Tifa would appreciate my assistance.

Once the vegetables were washed I chopped cabbage and sliced carrots. Meanwhile, Marlene insisted on setting up my new phone and showing me all of its features. She took photos of herself smiling while striking a pose, photos of me and Tifa working in the kitchen, of Cloud recording deliveries in a ledger, of Denzel reading a book, and of Yuffie sitting on the counter while she drank a bottled orange soft drink. Marlene made a video of the mid-morning foot traffic while she sat on the steps of the restaurant’s front door.

She demanded that Cloud, Tifa, and Yuffie stop what they were doing and crowd around me while she took another photo. “This one is for your home screen and your lock screen,” she announced. Then she sat on a chair and programmed in a lengthly list of phone numbers, names, email addresses, and birthdates.

“You need an email account of your own,” she told me.

I nodded. Her thumbs returned to work, conjuring a spell of normalcy through the buttons on the phone’s keypad.

She held the phone out to me. “Type a password you’ll remember.”

Using my index finger, I poked my way through spelling it out.

“It better not be something depressing.” Marlene pouted, fisted hands pressed to her hips.

Yuffie laughed. “More like boring _and_ depressing.”

“It’s just the name of my favorite author,” I said.

“Who is it?” Marlene asked.

“Marlene,” Tifa said, “that would give away the password.”

“Meh, it’s just gonna be somebody who writes dark melodrama or terrible poetry,” Yuffie said.

“Marlene, can you show me how to delete photos?” I asked.

Marlene eyed me with suspicion. “Why?”

“I need to get rid of the photos of Yuffie.”

“Hey!” Yuffie jumped off the counter and knuckle punched me in the arm before strolling away.

“Reeve will be here any minute,” she called out from the next room.

 

***

 

I had forgotten how much I appreciated Reeve’s pragmatism and his ability to get things done. Had I been born into the current generation of people who reported to Reeve, I wouldn’t have minded having him as my boss. He did not shy away from difficult problems and, for the most part, his heart was in the right place.

“The WRO has prioritized a significant line of funding for setting up shelters and clinics throughout Edge. We’re offering free medical care, meals, and beds. Also, there are many orphans in Edge. If they no longer have relatives who can care for them, they will need placement in good homes. I have a half dozen survey teams scouring the city collecting data on how many people — children and adults — who have been displaced or who are too injured to support themselves.”

“So, what do you need from us?” Cloud asked.

“A number of things. But first, I need a small team I can trust with the keys to the kingdom.”

Yuffie snickered as she tipped her chair backwards, balancing on its two back legs.

“And that’s where we come in,” Cloud said.

“I wanna hear about these secret keys.” Gleaming just a little too much, Yuffie rubbed her hands with glee.

“Years ago, I was involved in creating emergency relief plans for Midgar in the event of a major disaster. Shinra maintained stockpiles of supplies in warehouses located on the outskirts of the city. During the events two years ago, some of those warehouses were outside the zone of damage.”

“You’re telling this to us now, two years later?” Cloud interrupted.

“Just because I am telling you now doesn’t mean that we’ve been hoarding these supplies without using them. In the past, I’ve used the Turks for this, but now I need more hands.”

“Wait a minute,” Yuffie said. “You haven’t said what Shinra stockpiled.”

“I’m getting to that,” Reeve responded.

Yuffie leaned forward. The front legs of her chair met the floor with a decisive _clack_.

“Plasma, antibiotics, vaccines, common medications, medical supplies, emergency healing potions, battery packs, non-mako fuel sources, materia, ammunition, and weapons.”

“I see,” I said.

“I am giving you access to one of the warehouses and an unmarked armored truck. I have people in the warehouse who will be expecting you. They’ll have the first delivery ready, packed, and waiting for you.”

“Who are these people of yours?” Cloud asked.

“Former Shinra employees. People who worked for the Department of Urban Development for years. For some of them, decades.”

“Who’s paying for this?” I asked.

Reeve looked at me. His silence confirmed what I suspected.

Yuffie clasped her fingers together and leaned forward. “All that matters is people getting the assistance they need.”

In the two years since I had last seen Yuffie, she had changed considerably. The younger Yuffie I had known would have mouthed off and acted rebellious. Now she spoke like a politician’s adult daughter.

Reeve looked at Yuffie and addressed her specifically. “You’ve had experience running a clinic in Wutai.”

“That’s right. We saw some of the first cases of geostigma. I documented everything. Even figured out who was most susceptible to the disease. Figured it out long before anyone else.”

One thing about Yuffie hadn’t changed. She still maintained her signature bravado.

Reeve addressed his next words to her. “If you plan on staying in Edge for a while, we should talk later about work that would be fitting for you.”

Yuffie straightened up in her chair and nodded. This time her words were more measured. “Let’s set up time to discuss that.”

The politician’s daughter, indeed.

 

For the next few weeks, all Reeve needed from us was a team of armed guards whom he could trust not to steal from him while transporting coveted supplies in an armored vehicle. And, because it was us, Reeve tossed in a lengthy laundry list of menial jobs and routine errands because he knew we wouldn’t complain.

For the first run, Cloud, Yuffie, and I went out to retrieve supplies. We drove to the warehouse on the northeastern outskirts of the ruins of Midgar. Passage through three security checkpoints maintained by the WRO proved to be quick and painless. The warehouse was a nondescript concrete building that would have attracted no one’s attention had it not been surrounded by razor wire fencing and heavy security. As we stood on the back of the building’s loading dock, Yuffie and I looked into the building’s interior. Reeve wasn’t kidding. The stockpile could sustain a sizable militia during a prolonged operation. And this was only one of multiple warehouses.

After the truck had been loaded, we drove back to Edge and delivered the supplies to three different shelters located in the north, the center, and the south of Edge. Once the high security portion of our day’s work had been done, our next stop was at a distribution company for household products. Two men stood in a loading dock waiting for us. They piled dozens of boxes full of toiletry kits into the truck. Our final stop was the shopping district north of Edge’s center. We divvied up our funds from Reeve and divided up the shopping list. Yuffie went off to purchase bedding and blankets. Cloud purchased clothing and outerwear suitable for younger children while I found similar items for teens and adults.

Then, using my own money, I purchased for myself a handful of black shirts, some casual, some appropriate for the WRO office, two pairs of pants, a set of pajamas, one pair of leather shoes, and other various sundries. I now figured I would be staying in Edge for a little while.

After one more round of delivery drop-offs, our final stop for the day took us to the market district. We loaded up on food items that were easy to prepare. From there, we drove back to Seventh Heaven and parked the truck in the alley behind the restaurant. The three of us carried the food in.

After I showered and dressed in the clothing I had purchased, I found a comb and an elastic band, and stood in front of the mirror as I worked my hair into a low ponytail. I didn’t bother with the fringe of hair that fell around my face. The ghost of my former self, the Vincent Valentine who worked for Shinra, stared back at me through the mirror. The most notable difference was that his skin was now deathly pale, but the rest of him looked familiar enough. Even the music drifting down the hallway from the living room was a jazz radio program that played the same tunes I had listen to when Shinra first hired me. 

I put the palm of my hand to the mirror and noted the gap between my reflection and the glass. The man who stared back into my eyes remained trapped on the other side. He might as well have been an actor on TV. He stood in a world that no longer existed, much like I was trapped in a dark bubble of stagnation unaffected by time. Even though that Vincent Valentine had lived as a mortal man, he housed his own monsters and demons. Not as powerful as mine, but they had been there, inside of him. They made him into the sin-ridden person he had been.

Would he had volunteered his days helping the unfortunate? I don’t know. I looked into his eyes and failed to find an answer. But it was his fault that much of this misfortune had occurred. I knew he realized this. My continued existence was proof as well as being our punishment.

Through the mirror, I watched Yuffie approach. I began anticipating comebacks to disarm her snide comments. To my surprise, she said nothing. Cautious and questioning, she hung back and stared at me via my reflection. Through the mirror, I looked back at her. I wondered if she saw the reflection of the man I had been or if she only saw me as the Vincent she met two years ago, the Vincent she soundly mocked after I stepped out from a coffin.

“We’re gonna eat a quick dinner before we prep food to take to the closest shelter,” she said.

Without a word, I switched off the bathroom light, turned around, and followed Yuffie down the hall. As for what that reflection of my former self did in his world on the other side of the glass, it no longer mattered. He met his death long ago.

Yuffie, Cloud, and I ate a quick meal before spending much of the evening prepping and packaging soup and sandwiches in ready to serve containers. By the time we had finished, Tifa had closed up the bar. The four of us loaded everything onto the truck. By then it was well past eleven p.m. so I told Cloud to stay with Tifa. It wouldn’t take me long to drop everything off.

The moment I pushed the key into the ignition, the passenger door opened. Yuffie jumped in.

“Just like old times,” Yuffie said.

“I don’t recall making late night deliveries any time in the past.”

“No, just like old times in that I’m about to spend the witching hour with the uncanny, mysterious, spine-chilling gunman, Vincent Valentine, the one and only, but now here in Edge.”

I backed the truck out. After a few blocks, I turned onto the main road. Despite the hour, Edge had not gone to sleep. Neon signs blinked, beggars begged, party-goers reveled, drunkards staggered, theater goers poured out onto the sidewalk beneath rows of hot white lights. 

“Vincent?”

I glanced at Yuffie.

“What were you really doing over these past two years?”

“I thought you said Nanaki told you.”

“He only ran into you a couple of times. The first time you actually ditched him. You just took off. Elusive as ever. Just a circular swoosh of red spiraling around and then — POOF — gone. It’s a pretty good magic trick.”

“I didn’t ditch him.”

“Yeah, I know, you just had something you had to do.”

I braked for a red light. A throng of rowdy people crossed the street, shouting at each other with a loudness that spoke of how drunk they were.

“You know Vince, you’re only a monstrous beast of the wild lands if that is how you choose to live. Right now, you’re just some guy named Vincent driving through the streets of Edge. That’s also a choice and you are the one making it.”

If only things were that easy.

We drove the next mile in silence. Yuffie had said what she felt she needed to say. I had to give her credit for not prodding and needling me for a response. An undemanding silence settled in the cab of the truck. Beyond the windshield the world moved around us in a dance of late night urban rhythms. Women scampered in high heels and tight dresses while dashing from one club to the next, apparently unaffected by the smashed glass and damaged buildings just a few streets away. A group of guys on motorbikes zoomed past us, swerving in and out of the snaking red taillights that marked the stop and go traffic ahead. Off this long corridor buzzing with activity, the darkened side streets led to dead-ends of construction or walled-off security zones. To the east, the night sky was blotted out by the skeleton of Midgar, a dark hulking mess that would never forgive me.

Yuffie remained quiet the rest of the way to the shelter. After the deliveries were made, she hopped into the truck and fiddled with the radio.

“You don’t mind, do ya?” Yuffie shot a quick glance at me.

“It’s fine.”

A barrage of static, clipped syllables, and a staccato of notes blurted from the radio until she locked onto one station and sat back in her seat.

“We’re just one minute from midnight here at Radio Midgar 102.5, broadcasting from our new facilities in Edge, now with repeaters carrying our signal all the way up to Kalm, just like how it was back in the good old days. For the next three hours I’ll spin nothing but the best from the last four decades. Songs that will bring back memories that will make you sing, make you dance, make you call that special someone you’ve thought about for far too long, make you reach out and hold your lover, make you laugh with your best buds, and for those of you who are sitting alone tonight, just pour yourself another and give me a call. Request lines are open at seven eight three nine seven six one oh two five. That’s seven eight three nine seven six one oh two five. And now I’m taking you back to 1978, to one of the greatest dance songs of all time, ranked number eighteen among all songs from the seventies. This one goes out to all you fragile hopeless romantics. Handle with care, because it shatters… just like glass.”

Strange how a loss of time works. Right away I recognized the singer’s voice but the song was from an album I had never heard. 1978. The first few weeks of that year had been nothing but stress while I pretended to know what I was doing. And then everything ended.

Yuffie bopped her head and shoulders to and fro as she gazed out the passenger side window. Young people who had dressed themselves in provocative clothing stood outside bars and nightclubs, laughing and flirting and posturing, waving an arm wildly at someone who approached from the other side of the street, calling friends who haven’t arrived, hailing cabs, walking arm and arm. When we stopped at a red light, a crowd passed directly in front of us, a couple of the women all but spilling out of the tops of their dresses. Yuffie gave me the oddest sidelong glance with a telltale half smirk. 

“What?” My voice barely raised above the music.

“I’ll bet you one mastered ice that back in the seventies the equivalent of these types weren’t your crowd.” She winked before turning her gaze forward, out through the windshield that felt like a TV screen. That piece of glass separated us from the ever moving world as we sat in a bubble of musical nostalgia.

“Merely a mastered ice?”

“No sense robbing you blind over the obvious.” Then, after a moment, she added, “Plus, we both know that making midnight deliveries wasn’t your line of work either.”

When the light turned green, I turned left, past a row of tiny street-facing shops lit up in blueish fluorescent light that were only now readying to close, past markets that had boarded up hours ago, past a couple saying goodbye as one of the pair got off the back of a motor scooter, around the bend, and then into the alley behind Seventh Heaven.

 

Everyone else was asleep by the time Yuffie and I returned.

I wandered to the bathroom to brush my teeth and change into the pajamas I had purchased earlier. Yuffie saw me when I walked down the hall back toward the living room.

“Whoa, Vincent? It’s almost like you’re—” She paused and searched for her next word as I stared at her. “Uh— well, you know, normal, sort of, or close enough. Like, passing as normalish. Normal enough. Even sort of boring. Wow. Who would ever thought it? Vincent Boring Valentine. Or… wait! Is this what you used to be like?”

She snickered as she stood in the hallway, arms akimbo, blocking my passage.

“Oh, Vince! Your secret identity is safe with me. I won’t even sneak in to take a photo of you to use as blackmail.”

“Thoughtful as always.”

She took a step forward and peered at the cotton fabric on my sleeve. “Oh my god. The print _even_ has a hint of a two-tone plaid weave with dark blue on darker blue checks. What’s up with that? If this is your fashion pick for the night, we need to wake everyone and prepare for battle because the world must be coming to an end.”

“The merchant who sold me this failed to warn me of such dire consequences.”

“They never do. They just want your money.”

“Goodnight, Yuffie.”

I began to push my way around her, but she jogged a quick step backward. “Hey, wait a minute, will you?”

“It’s late.”

“Look, can I ask you a favor? It’s just a small favor, really, no big deal, nothing serious.”

“What?”

“Just earlier, I saw the stuff you got, and, well…”

Whenever Yuffie felt she was imposing on others which, in her case, meant absolutely anything that made her appear less than one hundred percent self-reliant, she had a habit of dancing around her point with far too many unnecessary words.

“What.” I repeated, which only made her more flustered.

She took in her breath, acting as if indignant. “Look, here’s the deal. I’m going to be here longer than I thought and I’m running out of — actually, I have ran out of anything vaguely clean and— after all that work in the kitchen, _pheee-uuuw_ , my shirt reeks of tomato sauce and god knows what else—“

“What do you want.”

She winced at the accidental brusqueness of my words but at least that got her to finally spit out what she had wanted to say. “Look, it’s really not a big deal. Okay? Can I _just_ borrow one of those shirts you bought?”

“Go ahead.”

The nervous tension drained from her as she bounced on the balls of her feet. “Thanks, Vince!” She sprinted into the living room and with the swiftness of a thief, she plucked her reward from the bag. She darted back past me, black t-shirt in hand, off to the guest-room she had claimed for herself.

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

As the days unfolded, we fell into routines that were as predictable as the clock on the kitchen wall. Reeve had far more work than his staff could handle and few people he believed he could trust. So I offered my help until Reeve found capable workers, and I stayed in Tifa’s apartment above Seventh Heaven.

Cloud had begun to developed a lightness around him that I almost envied. The glue that had held the muscles of his face in a blank configuration had begun to melt. He was still quiet, but now I’d catch hints of laughter and the wink of an eye. He seemed present, as if he actually inhabited his body rather than commanding each muscle by shouting from afar. The mako treatments and Jenova cells were still part of his body, but at least for now he seemed to have made peace with who he was.

After we finished another delivery for one of Reeve’s centers, I told everyone that I’d meet them later.

I took off in the direction of the WRO office as I called Reeve. He picked up after two rings.

“Tuesti speaking.”

“I have something to ask you.”

“Vincent, what can I do for you?”

“Do you have access to Shinra’s original files on Project S? The initial paperwork from when the project first commenced.”

“Why do you want them?”

“I have something I need to put to rest.”

“Need to? Or want to?”

“I don’t see the difference.”

“I can’t guarantee I have what you are looking for.”

“Are you in your office?”

“Yes. Why?”

“See you in fifteen minutes.” I hung up before he could say no.

 

Reeve’s office was modest for a man in his position. Nothing but a desk, a chair, a phone, and three large screens hooked up to his computer. The office’s single window gave him an unobstructed view of the expanse of devastation in the city of Midgar. He certainly had past sins he would not forget.

He looked up as I walked in.

“This is all I have access to.” He gestured at a window on one of his computer screens, a folder full of scanned documents.

“Can I look through these?” I asked.

“Is there something specific you are looking for?”

“Does it matter?”

“Vincent…” Reeve took in his breath while holding back whatever he was about to say. Finally, he pushed his chair back and stood up. “Use my office for as long as you need. I’ll be down the hall.” He gave my shoulder a pat as he walked out and closed the door behind him.

I sat in his chair as I scanned the list of files without opening any. I didn’t even bother to scroll beyond the first screen of file names. I already knew what they contained.

19770912-SMNL-PS-Proposal_G.pdf

19770912-SMNL-PS-Budget_G.pdf

19771014-SMNL-PS-Weekly_H.pdf

19771021-SMNL-PS-Weekly_H.pdf

19771028-SMNL-PS-Weekly_H.pdf

19771104-SMNL-PS-Weekly_H.pdf

19771111-SMNL-PS-Weekly_H.pdf

19771118-SMNL-PS-Weekly_H.pdf

19771121-SMNL-PS-Daily_C.pdf

19771121-SMNL-PS-Sono01-C.pdf

19771122-SMNL-PS-Daily_C.pdf

19771123-SMNL-PS-Daily_C.pdf

19771124-SMNL-PS-Daily_C.pdf

19771125-SMNL-PS-Daily_C.pdf

19771125-SMNL-PS-Weekly_H.pdf

Years after the project’s conception, some Shinra employee had scanned every page from Hojo’s and Lucrecia’s lab notebooks, along with other documents generated when Project S began.

When I worked for Shinra’s Department of Administrative Research, they gave me the opportunity to advance my career by taking a position out at the Shinra Mansion Laboratory in Nibelheim. My official function was supervising the managerial aspects of Gast’s newly funded Jenova Project. Mostly that meant overseeing the budget, facilities, and implementing security. Every Friday the scientific staff dropped off their weekly reports on my desk. I wasn’t expected to do much more beyond stamping and dating their weeklies, putting them in an envelope, and handing them to a private courier who delivered them to the Director of Research at HQ.

Once Project S began, I started noticing discrepancies. Data omissions, missing dates, coded phrases that made no sense. I asked Professor Gast for access to the lab notebooks that Lucrecia and Hojo kept. For weeks they refused to let me read them. When I finally did, pages were missing. Lucrecia claimed those pages never existed. I knew they had to be somewhere. Well, someone in Shinra managed to find them.

It took me one click to find the answer to the question I had asked in late November of 1977. On the date of November 25th, 1977, Lucrecia began treatment for Project S at the end of the sixth week after conception.

The sixth week. There it was.

Three decades later I had my answer. I could have closed the file, stood up, and walked away. Maybe I should have, but data that had been hidden from me thirty years ago was sitting right in front of me. One by one I opened each file and scrolled through all of it. The dosage of the treatments, the dated sonograms, the genetics tests, complete genomic sequence analysis for all three of them. Nothing in the early data appeared fake or misleading. It was consistent and exactly as Hojo had said.

I never fully understood Lucrecia’s reasons for refusing to tell me how far along she was when I learned she was pregnant. The difference of a month had personal implications but the truth wouldn’t have changed my feelings and it certainly would not have changed my objections to their research. Even the offer I had made to her would have still stood. Did she really believe that an air of ambiguity would have kept me in whatever place she wanted me to be? She was always like that. Always stuck on ideas in her head while refusing to believe what other people told her.

As for me, I only wanted her to be happy no matter what she decided to do. I also wanted her to trust me. That’s all I wanted.

 

* * *

 

Every time I think back to the year 1977, all that comes to mind is endless rain. That cold damp chill that never leaves your bones. Rings of salt stains on damp leather. Perpetually cold feet stuffed into perpetually uncomfortable shoes. November of that year had been particularly miserable.

I was sitting in my office in the Shinra Mansion in the Nibelheim Laboratory at ten minutes after nine in the morning when my phone rang. I put down my pen and leaned forward to grab the handset.

“Hello?”

I already suspected who was on the other end of the line. When I was met with silence followed by the faintest sound of someone exhaling, I knew. I didn’t even bother confirming my suspicion.

“Is everything alright?” I asked, lowering my voice even though nobody was remotely within range of my office to hear me.

“The maid is here, cleaning the kitchen. She’s almost done.” Lucrecia’s voice was barely a whisper.

“Your husband there?” The moment those words left my mouth, crossed the wires, and spilled into her ear, she made an indignant tsk’ing sound.

“He just left.”

“How much longer until the maid leaves?”

I listened into the silence for at least a minute. I didn’t hang up. While cradling the phone’s handset between my shoulder and my ear, I grabbed my pen and continued making notes on an equipment request that I had to approve before the Vice President of Research would release Gast’s next round of funding.

“She just took out the trash.”

“I’ll wait until Hojo has checked through security and entered his lab.”

After a few seconds of silence Lucrecia disconnected the call. I replaced my handset back into its cradle on the phone and waited.

Twenty minutes later I walked up three flights of stairs to Lucrecia’s apartment. Right after she and Hojo got married, they moved out of the mansion and into a one bedroom apartment in the center of town. As I approached the door, her dog began to bark. A few seconds later, she unlocked the door and opened it.

When I hesitated at the threshold, Lucrecia misunderstood my reason for not entering. “He won’t bite,” she said.

“Are you sure I should be here?”

Her eyes narrowed as she reevaluated my hesitancy. Finally, she sighed. “I just need to talk to someone.”

Hearing her say those words as I stood at her apartment door hit me with deja vu. That was how our affair started after she married Hojo. And that’s how it keeps restarting every time one of us puts an end to it. We were a record spinning on a turntable, needle skipping on the same scratch, always jumping back to the same spot on the vinyl. I had done nothing to lift the needle, either to move it to the next song or to just give up and turn the record player off.

Lucrecia’s dog continued barking at me the whole time. She gripped his collar. “Just come in before the neighbors start wondering.”

So I did.

I closed the door behind me. “Do the neighbors have reason to wonder?”

My question was loaded. The ice cold anger etched on her face gave me my answer.

I followed her into the kitchen. We sat on matching chairs positioned on opposites sides of an aluminum table with a yellow formica top. Lucrecia held her shoulders askew as she looked away, off to the side, toward the window. I leaned forward and clasped my hands on the table as I waited until she felt ready to speak.

“Hojo has become impossible. He yelled at me for an hour this morning. I don’t know what to do. He was unreasonable. He just kept on…yelling. I know he’s frustrated but he just wouldn’t stop. He— he’s been angry, difficult.”

“This morning, how did it start?”

“Does it matter? Does it really matter?” Her head snapped in my direction. “Hojo went on an hour long tirade! An entire hour. He was practically unhinged!”

“Did he hurt you?”

“Me?” She snorted and looked away from me. “No.”

As Lucrecia gazed out the window at nothing in particular, I leaned back in my chair and scanned the room. One of the walls glistened with a fine sheen of drying water. A white sliver of shattered dishware lay on the floor in the corner of the room.

“He’s just frustrated,” she said.

“Frustration is not a reason for treating you like this.”

“He doesn’t know what to write in his annual report. The results haven’t been…” Her words tapered off. She looked down at her hands.

“Shinra isn’t going to shut this lab down,” I countered.

“How do you know that?” Her eyes blazed. “How do I know you aren’t saying things just to— to _dismiss_ me— just to _calm_ me down!”

“Lucrecia.”

I reached across the table to hold her hand but she snatched her arm away. “Don’t touch me! Just tell me the truth, Vincent. Just tell me! Are they shutting us down or not? Why hasn’t the next round of funding been approved? Why?”

As a Turk, there were things I wasn’t authorized to tell her or anyone else among the scientific staff. She knew that. “They won’t release the next round of funding until the annual report has been filed.” I chose my next words with care. “I have seen the details of the budget. It’s adequate. Work will continue.”

“Continue? Is that all you can say? Continue as is? Continue as before? Continue in the same direction? Continue with the same expectations? Continue with the same restrictions? Continue with the same staff? The current research budget ends in one month. How will it continue, Vincent? Tell me!”

“Once the annual report is filed, you don’t need to worry.”

“You never answer my questions.”

And she never answered mine.

I slouched and settled my hands in my lap. Had I any sense, I would have gotten up and left. Instead, I remained seated in that small kitchen, waiting for her to tell me anything I might want to hear.

Unfortunately, she broke the silence between us by asking the last thing I could give her any assurance of. “How do I know you aren’t lying?”

“Lucrecia, you know I cannot discuss these details. You just have to trust me. I have never lied to you and I’m not going to start now.”

She didn’t believe me. Why should she? She had lied to me. People have lied to her. My words and my intent were meaningless as far as she was concerned. She only believed in actions.

I changed the topic. “When you called, you said you needed to talk to someone. It must have been about more than this.”

She propped her elbows against the table and leaned her face into her hands, chin in her palms, fingers spidering over her mouth. She looked at me. She looked and said nothing as the second hand on the clock ticked above her head on the wall. 

“If this project ends—“

“Lucrecia, I told you, nothing is ending and that’s all I can say about it.”

“Stop interrupting. I’m speaking hypothetically. It will end someday. Projects have lifespans. People have careers that take new directions. Everything eventually ends.”

“So, what’s your point.” I didn’t mean to, but I knew I came off curt.

“Let’s just suppose that I left the project or my part in the project ended…” Her words trailed off.

“Are you telling me that you are thinking of leaving?”

She pulled herself up straight and crossed her arms. “I cannot discuss such details with you,” she sniped, throwing my words back at me.

I should have stayed out of her personal affairs, but as I sat in that kitchen listening to the sound of the ticking clock, I clung to the hope that a sliver of possibility allowed me to salvage whatever might be left between us. I knew it was foolish but, really, I wanted her to smile and laugh like she once had, not long after we met, back when I thought I had a chance, back before all the misunderstandings about my father, before her marriage, before our on and off affair. I wanted to turn back the clock and start over, knowing what I knew now. “Lucrecia. Are you…” I chewed on the words I wanted to say, knowing nothing good would come of them. “Are you certain you are still happy with Hojo?”

“Fuck you, Vincent. Fuck you.”

That should have been my cue to leave but I didn’t get up.

A few seconds later Lucrecia started crying and I just sat in that chair and looked down at my hands. The clock on the wall kept ticking.

I no longer knew what to do, so I did nothing.

Minutes ticked away as Lucrecia sobbed.

“I can’t leave him, Vincent. I can’t.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“Hojo would fall apart if I left and I don’t know what I would do either. I’d have to leave Shinra, but I can’t. I wouldn’t find the right kind of job if I left now.”

“You’d find something.”

“Stop acting naive. I haven’t published a single paper since I arrived here. None of my work has produced publishable results. I cannot leave until something succeeds. I cannot. If I leave now, that’s the end. No one will hire me, no one will fund me. Publish or perish, Vincent. You know that.”

“Maybe it won’t be easy, but I’m sure you’ll find something.”

“Stop trying to protect my feelings. You sound like an ass.”

“Lucrecia, you don’t seem happy anymore. Isn’t happiness worth the risk of trying something new?”

“My career makes me happy. This is all I’ve ever wanted to do. Why can’t you understand that?”

“I can, but you have been upset for a very long while and I remember what you were like when you were happy. Maybe it’s affecting your work. Anyhow, this place is a fishbowl where everything gets blown out of proportion. We’re out in the sticks. There’s nothing for us in Nibelheim but work. Back in Midgar we have access to everything. Life’s more balanced there. So, maybe—“

“No, Vincent. No. No. I am not leaving. I am not forgetting everything I have ever worked for!”

I don’t know what got into me, but I said it anyway, “What if I was the one who left?”

“What?” Her blank stare melted into an ugly disappointment as she slowly started shaking her head. “Don’t ask me what I think you are asking.”

“Would you?”

She stared into my eyes. I wanted her to say yes but I already knew her answer. I was far more than a year too late. There was no turning back the clock.

“If we both leave,” I continued, “I will do whatever I can to help you find a way to continue your career.”

She turned away from me so I couldn’t see her face. “I want you to leave now. Get out.”

Without another word, I pushed my chair back, stood up, and left.

Two days later at five thirty in the afternoon Lucrecia announced she was pregnant. Hojo peacocked across the lab as Gast broke out a box of cigars. The announcement left me speechless. I walked back to my office and closed the door. Our conversation in her kitchen replayed in my head, endlessly repeating like a broken record.

She had known then. She had known and she hadn’t told me. I never understood why.

 

* * *

 

Try as I might to remain inconspicuous as I left the WRO offices, Reeve managed to corner me in the front lobby.

“Find what you were looking for in those files?”

“Perhaps.”

“After all that has happened with Sephiroth, you should now feel a little less guilty in the matter. Off the hook, so to speak.”

Reeve never had the sense to leave well enough alone. “How does one less sin attached to my name mean anything when all the consequences are eternal?”

“It means you can rest a little easier each night when you think about what you have been required to do.”

“If you say so.” I brushed past Reeve and headed for the door.

“Vincent!”

The guard at the front door stepped aside as I strode out. I kept a brisk pace as I avoided crowded streets. By the time I was a few blocks from Seventh Heaven and Tifa’s apartment, I stopped and leaned against the windowless side of a brick building that faced into a quiet street corner.

I knew Reeve was trying to make me feel less guilty about what we all had to do, but he had always misunderstood the problem. My position in Shinra gave me the authority to monitor all research performed in the laboratory in Nibelheim. I could have shut Project S down. But I didn’t.

I let it happen.

As for Reeve’s sense of consolation, Lucrecia’s real son had been dead now for seven years and all of that happened while I slept. I could understand Lucrecia hiding the truth of her son’s paternity had I actually been the father, but I wasn’t. And she knew that. Still, she allowed me to wonder.

I wasn’t angry. I don’t remember ever being angry with her. The truth was that neither of us ever felt comfortable letting go. My life was a skipping vinyl record, endlessly stuck playing the same set of notes.

Now, I just wanted to learn what other secrets she had kept from me. I knew she had kept other secrets. I knew, and I needed answers that only she could give.

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

Tifa closed Seventh Heaven early on every Monday and Tuesday evening. By the time I got there, I helped her clean up and then we went upstairs and ate a light meal.

After Marlene and Denzel had been put to bed, Cloud popped a DVD into the player and grabbed the remote. Tifa and Cloud sat on one end of the sofa while I made myself comfortable at the other end.

A minute later Yuffie walked out of the kitchen with a gigantic bowl of popcorn.

She tossed a piece in the air and caught it in her mouth. “Shove over and make room,” she said. She wedged her narrow frame between Tifa and me.

We dug into the popcorn as Cloud turned off the lights and started the movie. It wasn’t long before the four of us had demolished the entire bowl.

About twelve minutes in, the movie cut to an abrupt scene that was designed to give the audience a scare. Cloud winced and groaned, Tifa gasped, and Yuffie tensed and shrieked as she grabbed my hand. She must have heard me chuckle because she leaned into me and whispered, “I was only scared for a second, maybe two, no more than three.”

I should not have countered with a joke, but something of my old self spoke up. “It doesn’t count if it’s three seconds or less.” That invited her next response.

“That’s right, doesn’t count as anything,” and then she leaned against my arm without letting go of my hand.

Once upon a time, in a different life, this situation would have struck me as far more appealing. Now? I really don’t know. The only consolation to my conscience was that Yuffie’s interests flitted like a swarm of fireflies on a late summer evening.

I could have quietly gotten up and left the room or moved from the sofa to the unoccupied chair, but both would have caused disruption, either with Tifa following after me to see what was wrong or with Yuffie berating my antisocial tendencies. Sometimes the easiest road avoids conflict by taking you on a circular scenic route, offering a sense of escape until you land up back where you started.

For the next hour and a half, as tension in the movie’s narrative ratcheted and actors shrieked, bells tolled, and characters were murdered, Yuffie flinched and grimaced as she squeezed the last remaining life out of my fingers. Every time the movie cut to the demonic clock, I’d echo it’s _tick tick tick_ while Yuffie punched me with my own hand. Whenever she shut her eyes and hid her face, I’d pick the most gruesome detail on the screen and repeat it, speaking close to her ear, knowing that her imagination was far more potent than the images on the TV screen. After a while, even Cloud started laughing at Yuffie’s antics.

When the credits rolled, she berated me anyway, but at least it was for being “the most awful, terrible, insensitive person to sit with while watching a scary movie.”

“Yuffie, you chose where you sat,” Tifa chided.

Cloud laughed. “Channel eleven could hire you two to host Late Night Fright. They could stick a box in the corner of the screen showing both of you goofing around.”

“Eventually the act would get old,” I replied.

Yuffie groaned. “More like I’d murder Vince right there on TV.”

Tifa hinted that if we needed to be up at a reasonable hour it was time for bed. She rousted Cloud and said goodnight.

I remained where I was as Yuffie let go of me and pushed herself away. Once she was up, she slowly meandered down the darkened hallway while I grabbed a blanket and stretched out on the sofa.

 

***

 

I woke up from a horrible dream.

I was a bat trapped in a large box, furiously beating my wings as I slammed back and forth into the box’s walls. The delicate membrane that formed my wings tore each time I crashed into a wall. I heard a loud crack as one of my wing bones shattered. That was when I fell, spiraling down and down, dropping at a dangerous speed. I hit the floor. Normally you wake with a jolt after falling in a dream but that did not occur, which convinced me this was really happening.

I lay sprawled on the floor, leaking blood, tattered wings tangled around my bat-like body. I heard the patter of running feet and Marlene’s voice. Tifa leaned over to scoop me up except her hand passed through the blackness of my body, dipping into me as if I had become a pool of dark oil. When she pulled her arm back, it was nothing but a severed stub. Marlene’s mouth opened unnaturally wide. At first no sound came from her but then a blood curdling screamed pierced my ears.

I jolted upright and worked to calm my fright while I caught my breath. A sickly yellow light from a streetlamp oozed through a window on the opposite side of the living room. I told myself this had only been a nightmare but the images remained vivid, all of it too real, too close to the present. I couldn’t remember how long it had been since my dreams took place somewhere other than Nibelheim or Shinra or my parents’ old home. It took a while for me to convince myself that nothing terrible had happened.

As quietly as I could, I walked to the bathroom and locked the door behind me. I washed sweat from my face and my neck. Even after brushing my teeth, my mouth still tasted sour.

I left the bathroom, made myself toast with raspberry jam, and I then tidied the kitchen before I turned off the light. No one else appeared to have woken up so I gathered my things from the living room and slipped out the front door, closing it with a soft click. I tested the knob once to make sure it had locked. The street was empty, as was the alleyway. I walked to the back of the building and tapped the seven digit key code Cloud had given me for opening the storeroom lock. I only took the bare minimum of what I needed, leaving behind half of my materia and two of three the weapons that I had carried for the last two years.

By the time the sun rose, I had put a safe distance between myself and the city of Edge.

 


	5. Chapter 5

Whenever my phone rang, if I had a free hand I’d take a quick glance at the screen to check the caller. If I didn’t recognize the number, I’d push a button that immediately jumped the call to voice messaging. But even when I knew the person who was calling, I never answered. Instead, I’d start thinking of them during that final ring, just before the call jumped to messaging.

On the day I left Edge, Reeve called at ten fifty-five in the morning as I sat in the back of a truck after hitching a ride to Junon. Immediately, the image came to mind of Reeve in a tailored suit and a long jacket with a cell phone pressed to his ear as he walked down a corridor after leaving a conference room. When Tifa’s number appeared on my phone the next day at quarter to four in the afternoon, I imagined her leaning forward with one elbow propped on the bar in Seventh Heaven, phone cupped between her shoulder and her ear, her other arm outstretched as she tapped the end of a pen against an A5 notepad lying on top of the bar. A call from Cloud at one thirty-five conjured an image of him straddling his motorbike in a dusty parking lot after making a delivery, sunlight reflecting off his goggles. When Yuffie called at ten thirty in the evening, I immediately saw her dressed in that black t-shirt she’d never return, the shirt’s hem hanging mid-thigh as she paced between the hallway in the kitchen in Tifa’s apartment.

Even once I had crossed to Costa Del Sol, I felt content knowing these people were in Edge, and that we had shared time together. Thinking about them was enough.

I had other matters that concerned me.

As a stopped-clock, the world only made sense when I put myself in places that were afflicted with an off-kilter notion of time. Perhaps you’d say I kept returning to the scene of the crime, except how does one return when time has, for all intents and purposes, stopped? I am stuck at the scene of the crime for all of eternity. Wherever I go, the scene of the crime remains attached to me. The further I wander, the more it feels like a clock spring being stretched uncomfortably taut. Eventually I just need to let the spring coil and pull me back.

 

* * *

 

While spending a night in Gongaga after restocking my supplies, I realized I still had four voice messages waiting for me. The days of travel had put enough distance between myself and the reasons I had left Edge. I felt ready to open my phone so I selected voice messaging and listened.

 _Thursday, May 28, ten fifty-five a.m. Beep._ Vincent, it’s Reeve. Missed you yesterday while we worked on opening the new clinic in South Edge. I hope all is well. Don’t forget that I have work for you whenever you need it.

 _Friday, May 29, three forty-six p.m. Beep_. Hi Vincent, Tifa here. Marlene and Denzel were upset that they didn’t get a chance to see you off. If you need anything, don’t hesitate to call.

 _Sunday, May 31, one thirty-five p.m. Beep._ Hey. It’s Cloud. I saw you left a few things in our storeroom. No problem. All of it is safe here. Stop by whenever you need anything.

 _Monday, June 1, ten thirty p.m. Beep._ Uh, Vince. Why did you leave like that? The last time you disappeared on us, you know, like, two years ago, you at least managed to mumble the word goodbye as you walked away but this time, nothing. You worry people when you do things like that. Do you realize this? I made an excuse for you two years ago when you took off but at least that time we had a moment where it looked from the distance like maybe we were having a real conversation even though I did all the talking while you glared over the top of my head with your goddamn demon eyes fixed on the horizon. So, now you’ve done it again and I had to do another one of those ‘Don’t worry Marlene, Tifa, Denzel, Cloud, Reeve, and anyone else who calls, it just turned out that Vincent had something really important that he had to do.’ Just so you know, civilized folks at least leave a note. Gawd, Vince. I thought we managed to have a discussion about choices and things normal people do. …Look, I’m not mad. I’m sure you’re all right because for all your weirdness you’re almost unbreakable. Just don’t be a stranger, okay?

_No more new messages._

 

* * *

 

I cannot remember a time when I found it easy to explain my emotions. Powerful feelings washed over me in a confusing jumble until I managed to still the tumult into quietude. The voices of people who enjoyed my company left me warm but the thought of reaching out to them filled me with an anxiety that never quite made sense. Even though it was mid-evening, which made it a reasonable hour to return some of their calls, enough time had passed that they no longer expected an immediate response.

Instead, I mulled over possible replies for the next few days, but after composing words in my head, it felt as if I had already said them. The next time I heard from one of them, I actually had to remind myself that I had forgotten to respond.

 _Tuesday, June 9, four fifty p.m. Beep._ Hey, Vince, do you still have that mastered time materia I lent you? No big deal. Just wondering. If you need it—wait,hold on………Yeah, as I was saying, if you still need that mastered time materia, no problem. Just use it well.

_No more new messages._

 

* * *

 

[ _Recording on…_ ]

When you are a stopped clock, it is possible to sleep for weeks, months, even decades. You remain inside this stagnant darkness, suspended in stasis. The darkness sustains you for as long as it is able to feed on neurological signals created by an endlessly looping nightmare. This becomes a sick symbiosis. And this is how I first learned of Chaos, before I could give that demon a name.

I do not know where the boundaries of my body ends and where Hojo’s modifications start and where Chaos’s begins. When I am injured, I do not know if it is my blood that leaks from the wound. Whose platelets adhere to the edge of severed skin, sending a frenzy of chemical signals throughout this body until a platelet plug is formed and the bleeding stops and another set of chemical signals are released such that regenerative healing begins?

I know that I heal at an unnatural speed. I regrow any kind of injured tissue, anywhere within my body, even brain cells, nerve cells, entire sections of vital organs. It’s best not to ask how I know this.

Here is all I know about Chaos:

One. Like the other monstrous beings I am able to transform into, I lose touch with my cognitive facilities. When transformed, I am not aware of the meaning of words or of logical reasoning.

Two. Unlike the other monstrous beings I transform into, in which I retain a basic level of instinctual and emotional awareness, when I transform into Chaos I am fully taken over by this demonic thing. When Chaos is done with me, it releases me. But when Chaos is in control of the atoms that we think of as my physical body, I am effectively gone and my fate is fully under Chaos’s control. An unknown period of time passes as I float inside a sea of thick, dark plasma.

Three. Chaos was not listed by name in the “Project V” notes I removed from a locked safe in Hojo’s abandoned office. His notes described how he strengthen my body’s endurance and enabled me to willfully control my transformation into three monstrous forms. His notes state that except for a brief period of time when I temporarily regained consciousness, my body remained in a comatose state. Once taken off life support, my tissues began to decay. My condition only began to stabilize when an unnamed substance was transfused into my bloodstream.The final sentence in Hojo’s notes indicated that abnormal genetic mutations or manipulations had been found in my DNA and that Hojo planned to investigate it further. I have found nothing else written by him on this matter.

Four. I did not realize my body could transform into Chaos until I went into the cave in the mountains east of Nibelheim. Was it the presence of Lucrecia or was it the cave itself? I have no answer. All I know is that after Chaos took my place as I floated in a dark void, I knew for certain that something about me had become far less human. The looks all of you gave me after I returned told me what had happened. Your fear was palpable and the descriptions given to me were unpleasant. Chaos wasn’t a mere monster. Chaos was intelligent, exacting, and demonic.

That was when I vowed to never again allow myself to be swallowed up in the darkness of Chaos.

I vowed, but unlike the other monsters within me, Chaos has a mind of its own.

[ _Recording stopped._ ]

 

* * *

 

 _Friday, June 12, five fifteen p.m. Beep._ Vince! Guess what? I’m in a bookstore in Edge that has shelves and shelves of vintage magazines, lots of horror and science fiction, you have got to see this place. There’s actually stuff here as old as you. Oh, god, you have got to see the cover art on some of these. And— Score! Here’s one with a big hulking Frankenstein on the cover. I am so buying this one plus a half dozen others just for you. And… wait, uh…Vincent, you know you are allowed to visit people more often than once every two years. Okay? Talk with you soon.

 _Saturday, June 13, one twenty-four p.m. Beep._ Hi, Vincent. It's Tifa. Your name came up this morning and Marlene has been asking about you. She has a birthday party in two weeks and she is wondering if you will come. Her party is at two on Saturday, the twenty-seventh. If you can't make it, you should still feel free to drop by sometime soon. Hope you are doing well.

 _Tuesday, June 16, nine oh-four a.m. Beep._ Hey, Vince. How often do you check your messages? Wait, do you even know how to check your messages?

 

* * *

 

Is the abandoned Laboratory in Nibelheim’s Shinra Mansion the real scene of the crime? The clock spring pulls back but, of course, the clock never winds.

After I was shot, time disappeared for more than a year. There are glimpses. Snapshots. Disconnected memories. By the time my consciousness returned, half of the laboratory had been abandoned. Only Hojo remained. I think we fought. No, I know we fought. Me with words, him waving a broken length of pipe. And then he told me something I wasn’t ready to understand. Listen to me, boy, I killed you, he said. I shot you and then I brought you back to life. He swung that pipe down on my forearm but my bones did not break and he laughed. No, he tipped his head back while his mouth gaped wide and he let out a bellicose bark. I made you, boy. His voice cracked with hysteria. I made you into what you are. At first I thought you were a failure so I threw your worthless body into the morgue, but it seems you were revived and now you have regained consciousness. So, what are you going to do, Vincent Valentine?

My throat was too dry to form words.

Hojo raised his chin and scowled at me. She’s dead, Vincent. Lucrecia is dead. What are you going to do? Take the blame for it? You do feel responsible for what happened? Because you should. You meddled in affairs where you did not belong and you meddled with things you should have never _touched_. _Never_! It was all your fault, Vincent Valentine!

I turned and ran down the hall and into the morgue but I found nothing. Nothing but empty coffins.

Inside one of them, I found my gun. The chambers were loaded.

Whether it was me who locked myself in the morgue or Hojo who turned the key does not matter. I climbed into an empty coffin and lay down.

 

* * *

 

Whether they wanted to or not, two years ago, the group of people whom Cloud led all received a first hand look at how my body healed in an unnatural manner. If I took too many blows in a battle, rather than sink and stagger until I blacked out, I could allow myself to transform into some sort of horror and instantly regain my health.

On the other hand, if I received an injury that should have left me permanently disabled if not dead, after a period of uninterrupted sleep I would regenerate. Barret found this extremely unsettling whereas Yuffie developed a morbid fascination with how destroyed parts of me slowly regrew. From my point of view, I’d just keel over and pass out after an all but fatal hit shattered me, and then some indeterminate amount of time would pass and I’d wake up whole. The only indication I had of how far gone I had been was the level of grogginess and confusion I felt when I came to.

But after that first time I fully transformed into Chaos, I never allowed myself to do that again. Any claim I previously had for being human evaporated straight into the vacuum of a vast empty space.

 

* * *

 

After a little bit of fiddling, I managed to set up my phone so its camera had almost a full view of the morgue in the basement of the Shinra Mansion. I started recording and then I walked into the middle of the room. A moment later I walked back to the phone and turned recording off.

No one, not even me, would want to watch what I needed to do.

 

When I turned recording back on, it took all my self control to keep my mind focused, my body upright, and my hands steady. I staggered back to the middle of the morgue, so I would be centered in the video. I kept myself upright by leaning on one of the coffins.

“I’m having a hard time staying conscious but I’ll describe what is happening for as long as I can. My pulse is pounding in my head. If I allowed myself to just focus on that pounding— an angry pounding— I know I’ll transform into one of those three monsters that Hojo gave me— except, that’s not why I’m here.

“Right now there’s something else. My vision is starting to tunnel. I’m staring as hard as I can across the room at the back of my phone’s camera lens while everything in the periphery is going black and that blackness is seeping inward. It’s sort of like that feeling just before you pass out except, this is different. The darkness wants to rip open— no, make space. Separate space. I can feel this thing— this demon— it almost feels conscious— I think I’m phasing out of this material space— molecules and atoms just phasing out— almost everything is dark now except a single point of light. It’s a far away star and its fading.”

 

* * *

 

Some unknown time later I checked into an inn and reviewed that video on my phone’s tiny screen. I practically had an out of body experience watching myself transform into Chaos. I don’t even know how to narrate what happened.

It was fucking horrifying.

 

* * *

 

 _Saturday, June 27, four thirty-one p.m. Beep._ So, Vince, I’m at this party and everyone’s been socializing for hours and it’s really great to see everyone together all at once — well, everyone except _you_ , and you won’t answer your phone — but, I dunno, do you ever feel like… How do I say this? Like talk gets empty after a while and you’d rather be doing something different, something meaningful. It’s like everyone’s settling into routines that are the same old, same old, day in, day out, and I’m just, I don’t know. It’s all so… Boring. I can’t live my life like that. I’ll just shrivel up. But, you know, at least I have things to do. I’m going to put on that patent-pending Yuffie smile and go back inside and be the life of the party everyone knows me to be because there’s no sense standing out here talking to a wall. Just so you know, people actually wish you were here so I might as well lie and tell them you told me to say hello and that you’re busy with something really important. I mean, it isn’t a lie that you’d say hello, because of course you would, but you could at least consider doing it in person sometime. Anyhow. I don’t know. Just… take care. Okay?

_No more new messages._

 

 


	6. Chapter 6

When I first stepped into this cave a little more than two years ago, I was too overwhelmed with shock when I saw Lucrecia, so I did not notice how the cave itself drew me in.

During that first visit, the moment I saw Lucrecia I had to speak with her. Yet for all the things I had wanted to say and all the questions I had wanted to ask, she cut me off. The only concern she had was her son. I told her what she needed to know and then she pushed me away. Again.

And now…

I don’t know what still remains of her or how much I should hope. I want to have that feeling of hope. I want to…

Most of the time I just feel numb. Not a three a.m. TV tuned to a dead station kind of numbness. More like the monotonous drone of words on the bottom of the screen, the crawl that loops endlessly on a twenty-four hour cable news channel. The events of the world play out while I watch as if I’m reading that crawl. It doesn’t even matter if I am there as one of the actors in the headline event. I still feel like I’m looking in from the other side of a glass screen. I watch and then I close my eyes and turn it off. Thirty years could pass before I open my eyes and the world flips back on, same channel, same news, different reporter.

Inside this cave I feel different. That continuous stream of events shuts off and goes away. All I hear is the sound of slowly dripping water, the echo of my footsteps, my heartbeat, my breath. Beyond that, silence fills the cave, the silence of waiting. Even waiting takes on a sense of purpose, although I cannot name the reason why.

The interior of this cave feels removed from the outside world. Time slows to the point it almost mirrors my stasis. This is the one place in the world were I almost feel as if I belong. The world’s clock creeps forward only as slowly as the occasional drip of condensation that has grown too heavy to cling to the tapering end of a stalactite. This is the only place I have found on the planet that does not feel like it is trying to reject me.

I should be dead.

When I was shot, I bled out and began to lose consciousness. As I lay face first on the floor, Hojo laughed at me. The last thing I remembered was the sound of Lucrecia running into the lab and yelling at her husband. Then the world as I knew it blacked out.

 

You, Lucrecia, you. You were there as I started to slip away.

 

During my first reawakening, as I tried to stand my legs gave out. Fear and anger sped my pulse. The instinct to survive took control of my mind. The shape of my hands began to grow. Finger nails became claws, my scream of terror grew into an inhuman roar. The chemicals in my brain failed to form memories of what happened next.

For some unknown period of time, my consciousness reduced to a blurry series of snapshots. Lab equipment from odd angles. Peering faces. Muted voices. None of it follows a narrative. It’s just a collection of a few torn and damaged photographs strewn across a vast black floor.

My next reawakening was different. My body had become faster and more agile than I had ever known myself to be. The emotions that had once pumped through my blood had been replaced with a viscous black sludge. As I walked through the mansion, everything appeared as if I was watching the world from afar while gazing through the surface of a gigantic flat screen. Whenever I step into this cave, that screen is gone and I feel almost as if I am present. I return here when I need to retreat.

Enter and the continuous loop of the world turns off.

But this time I have done something different. I’ve entered with conscious intent. I’m here for answers. If answers cannot be found, then I am here to learn how to ask the right question.

 

Lucrecia.

I remember seeing you.

I remember hearing your voice.

An argument began between you and Hojo. I feared that he would shoot you next.

That was my panic speaking.

Of course he wouldn’t shoot you. Of course he wouldn’t.

You had just begun your second trimester with his child and getting rid of me solved his problems. Research needed to continue. I was the problem.He wanted me gone.

Lucrecia, you were near the end of your twelfth week when Hojo shot me. I’ve seen the records. I know the date your son was born. I’ve read your lab reports. You worked for the entirety of your full term pregnancy. You hardly took off time to recover. The notes and formulas in your lab reports are vague and nonsensical, but you wrote them every day. You noted the date on top of each page. You were there in the mansion.

What did you see?

More than a year passed. You must have seen something, heard something, known something while Hojo experimented on my body. Do you know anything of the procedures not recorded in his files. What about documents no one has been able to find?

And, Lucrecia, of all the places for you to go after leaving us, why here? Why this cave?

 

Lucrecia’s face remained as still as stone. She had no answer for me.

I stood and walked along the perimeter of the cave, staying as close to the walls as I could while my finger tips dragged along the cool stone. When I reached the back of the cave, my path was blocked by that deep pool of darkness. I knelt before it. The water was black as ink and may as well have been infinitely deep. Nothing moved in the pool, not even the liquid that filled it. The surface remained as still as a black mirror. I looked down at my reflection staring up at me. My face reminded me of the video I had taken. I let down my guard and urged Chaos into being, watching my face grey into a mask of death as my consciousness slipped away.

 

 _Here we were born. In the end, here we will return_.

 

I awoke to the sound of dripping water echoing all around me. I stood and walked back to the dark pool. The water within it remained as mirror smooth as before. I cupped my hand and dipped it into the pool. The moment my hand broke through the surface, the water did not ripple. Not a single particle of light passed through. I may as well have stuck my hand into another dimension. Cold didn’t even begin to describe the sensation. If the vacuum of outer space could be condensed into a liquid pool, this is what it would feel like: the terrifying expanse of absolute nothingness. The mirror of black stillness perfectly encircled my forearm. Everything above the surface remained in this world, everything below the surface might as well have been gone. I had no wrist to rotate, no fingers to flex and curl. If I wanted to finally seek my end, could I submerge all of myself into this pool and be gone? I closed my eyes as I pulled my arm back, suddenly fearful it was no more than a severed stub.

I waited.

Sensation returned.

I opened my eyes and saw that I still had a functioning arm. My wrist rotated. My fingers flexed and gripped. Instinct told me that no normal living thing could submerge itself in that pool and come out alive, but I had no way of proving this nor did I even want to. The thought of placing any living thing into that blackness soured my stomach.

I pulled out my phone and began recording a video as I submerged my arm into the pool and withdrew it. Next I panned the phone’s camera around the cave.

When I finished recording, I stuck the phone back into my pocket. I walked over to where Lucrecia was encased in crystal, forever frozen in time.

Why did you come here? How did you know of this place? That I became aware of Chaos right after my first visit surely was not a coincidence.

I stared at her pallid face, dead without decaying, entombed and eternal. She gave me no answer. She must have known. She had to have known. But now any answers she had were lost.

It was my fault Lucrecia was gone.

Before I left, I took one long look at her face. “Until we meet again.” I listened as my words echoed within the cave. Again. Again.

But next time I would know the question I needed to ask.

 

* * *

 

It took me a couple of days to reach Nibelheim. The sky had clouded over by the time I arrived. I booked a room in the town’s inn. The moment I stepped out for dinner, rain began to fall.

I ended up eating at a country kitchen diner near the center of the town. This restaurant had been in Nibelheim for decades, and it had been rebuilt just as I remembered it. A couple of times back in 1976, I met Lucrecia here for lunch when I was under the impression we were actually, honestly dating. Even then she had kept secrets from me. Half a year went by while I attempted to court her. She acted like she was interested. Maybe she had been. I still swear she was. After all, she made half of the moves.

At that time I had no reason to doubt her. Now I only have questions. How long would we have kept cruising around the same circular road? Little did I know back then that we were caught in the gravitational pull of my father’s fallen career. Funny how things work out that way. Even when I tried escaping him, I just ended up back in his orbit. Lucrecia must have known I’d eventually find out, yet all those months went by and she said nothing. Whatever it was that the two of us had been enjoying, Lucrecia just didn’t want to raise any sort of emotional disruption. By the time the truth about her and my father and his death came out, she was so certain I’d turn cold toward her that she called me a liar when I said none of it was her fault.

My father was the first secret she withheld from me. The next secret she withheld was about her son. So what’s the third? Some unholy ghost?

Lucrecia was there in the mansion after I should have been declared legally dead. She was there. She had to have seen something. Every question I asked pointed back to that cave.

 

The next morning I purchased enough supplies to hold me over until I reached Rocket Town. One of my purchases was a removable memory card for my phone. I popped the card in, transferred all the video I had taken, popped it out, and stuck it in a padded envelope that I had already addressed to Reeve.

My phone rang as I sealed the envelope. I glanced at the screen. Yuffie.

After letting the call go for one more ring it jumped to voice messaging. I stuffed the phone back in my pocket. A minute later it vibrated with a long buzz against my leg, alerting me that a voice message had arrived. This time I checked the call history.

Eight voice messages and every single one of them was from Yuffie.

 _Wednesday, July 1, nine oh-five a.m. Beep._ Hello, Mr. Vincent Valentine? This is Radio Midgar 102.5 letting you know that you have won our weekly listener contest! Your prize is one free night out at Seventh Heaven in Edge. The offer is good any time this month so come and claim your prize at your earliest convenience.

 _Sunday, July 5, one forty-seven p.m. Beep._ So, what happened to you? I’m running out of things to tell people. Deep undercover work as a secret agent? Protection services for a scientific expedition in a tropical jungle? Stunt man on a movie set? Alien abduction? You gotta give me something to work with. And, you know, you can just call. Or call Cloud. I know Marlene showed you how those buttons on your phone work.

 _Thursday, July 8, ten twenty-eight p.m. Beep._ There’s a comet in the sky that is visible right now. You should see it. It has a red tail so it kind of reminds me of you, just spinning around on a big long orbit in the blackness of outer space. I’m in Wutai for a week. If you get this message and it’s still night time, go outside and look at the northern sky.

 _Sunday, July 12, eleven ten p.m. Beep._ No one else is here and — Oh shit! WHAT THE HELL IS THAT! SHIT! SHIT! SHIT! THERE ARE SO MANY LEGS AND IT’S SO HAIRY! OH GOD, NO! IT BENDS BACKWARDS AND WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT GROSS-OUT RASPING NOISE! I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. Oh my god, Vincent. I’m watching this scary movie, and AAAAYYYYYYYYYY—

 _Thursday, July 16, four fifteen p.m. Beep._ How many Vincent Valentines does it take to screw in a light bulb? None. He’d rather sit for all eternity in darkness.

 _Thursday, July 16, four eighteen p.m. Beep._ How many Shinra scientists does it take to screw in a light bulb? Bwahahaha. Don’t be silly! Shinra scientists don’t screw in light bulbs. They just screw people in their labs.

 _Yesterday, Saturday, July 18, eight thirty-one p.m. Beep._ Vincent, you’re now officially worse than Cloud. Do we need to send a search and rescue party? If someone doesn’t hear from you soon, don’t blame me when the cavalry comes looking for you.

 _Today, Sunday, July 19, ten twenty-six a.m. Beep._ Hey, Vince, have you seen Cloud lately. I dunno, maybe it’s crazy but I figured you might. If you do, tell him good ol’ Yuffie says he needs to get to Barret’s place lickity-split pronto quick. There’s a bunch of stuff waiting there for him from me. Pass that on, will ya? Because I know you are so reliable with phone calls. Really reliable. Totally one hundred percent, every single time. Vincent Reliable Valentine. That’s why I always count on you.

_No more new messages._

I snapped the phone shut.

I took a few long strides away from town before I stopped. _Fine_. I opened my phone and dialed Cloud. He answered after the first ring.

“Hey Vincent.”

“I have a message from Yuffie. Get over to Barret’s.”

“I’m on my way now.”

“And give Yuffie this message from me: This is my phone. She has no right to call it.”

“I’ll let her know.”

And that was when I heard Cloud laugh. Had they been encouraging her nonsense?

“So, Vincent, it’s been a while.”

“I’m looking for answers.”

“Have you found any?”

“Hard to say. I have something I need delivered to Reeve.”

“I’m an hour from North Coral. Where do you want to meet?”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I normally avoid using word-for-word dialogue from canon, even if it is obscure canon, but in this case the entire "This is my phone. She has no right to call it," exchange seemed appropriate.


	7. Chapter 7

After meeting with Cloud, I travelled north to Rocket Town but rather than let Cid and Shera know I was there, I booked a room at an inn on the outskirts of town. After a late light meal, I retired to my room and took a long hot shower. Just before I settled into bed, I checked my voice messages.

 _Today, Tuesday, July 21, ten twenty-two a.m. Beep._ Hey! What the hell is wrong with you calling Cloud and leaving a message for him to tell me that I have no right to call you? Do you know that you sound like a five year old pulling that shit? Vincent, give me a break. Grow the fuck up.

 _Today, Tuesday, July 21, five eighteen p.m. Beep._ It’s Cloud. I dropped off your package with Reeve. He’s expecting your call. And, uh, if Yuffie sounds angry, she’s just concerned. I don’t know what happened and I don’t want to get involved, but maybe try easing up on her a little and don’t give her such a hard time.

_No more new messages._

Time skips forward with the jolt of a needle skidding across a vinyl record. One loud screech and I’m lurched into another universe.

What the hell had I done to give _Yuffie_ a hard time? I hadn’t even seen her in months.

I checked the clock. Quarter to midnight. Too late to call Reeve and far too late to engage myself in a conversation with Yuffie only to have it turn into a bizarro game of mental chess. I switched my phone to silence mode, flipped off the light, and willed myself to sleep.

 

The next morning I called Reeve.

“Tuesti speaking.”

“It’s Vincent.”

“Vincent! You’ve been gone a while. Long enough that some of us became worried. I hope nothing is wrong.”

“There’s something I want you to look into for me.”

“Ah, Valentine, always the same. Do you even think of calling just to ask folks if they’ll meet for a beer?”

“Maybe next time.”

“I’ll hold you to it. So, what do you need?”

“Information. I’m not sure what I’m looking for but I’ll know when I find it.”

“Even if I could, it just isn’t possible for me to give you access to rummage through the entirety of Shinra’s databases, servers, and paper-based files. A lot of it was lost two years ago. You’ll need to be more specific.”

“That cave to the east of Nibelheim. You know the one.”

“What about it?”

“Shinra must have known about the cave. There must be some record of it. Find everything you can.”

“You’re asking me to look for a needle in a haystack, and that assumes any such records actually exist.”

“Shinra had to have known. There’s no other explanation. Look at the videos I sent you.”

“You’re not giving me much to go on, Vincent. Even I lack the ability to search the entirety of Shinra’s remaining records.”

“Don’t bother with anything recent. Look for something from the seventies, even from the sixties.”

“I’ll do what I can. I assume you would want this inquiry to remain discreet.”

“Once you find what I’m looking for, I doubt either of us will like it.”

“Can you be more specific about what _exactly_ I am looking for?”

“I wish I could, but this is all I know.”

“Alright, but I hope you aren’t in a hurry. This is Shinra’s haystack we’re talking about. I can’t promise quick results.”

“I have time.”

“Good. Oh, and Vincent, how should I contact you when I find something?”

“Call. Leave a message.”

“Where are you right now?”

“Does that matter?”

“You know you have people in Edge wondering about you. You should at least stop by. It’s been a few months.”

“I know.”

“I still have a lot of work in Edge that you could do. You’re capable and I trust you.”

“Reeve, I’m not looking for work.”

“Just think about it.”

“I need to go.”

“Vincent, take care of yourself.”

“You too.” I disconnected the call.

 

I considered leaving Rocket Town without visiting Cid and Shera, but I realized that was selfish and Cid would eventually learn from Reeve that I had been here. But rather than stop by Cid and Shera’s house to see if they were in, I took my time cleaning my weapon and my gear. After I inventoried my scant supplies, I shopped for remedies that come in handy when traveling through remote places.

After meteorfall and that final battle for the planet, other than the brief time I had spent in Edge, my path around the world had been determined by instinct. Shadows and hints of stagnation marked the trail that I tracked through the wilderness, wastelands, mountains, and frozen plains. When I needed to retreat, I slipped into the cave and took my rest. My path on the map of the world marked a ringed circuit, round and round, orbiting out, circling back. All I had to show for my efforts were the wrong questions. Maybe it was time to do something else.

Time to go back to the beginning.

 

An hour and a half after noon, I finally knocked on Cid and Shera’s front door. As it turned out, they were home and they were quick to welcome me inside.

Once I was seated at a table and eating a late lunch, my anxiety melted away. I began enjoying their company enough that I no longer felt any hurry to go.

After Shera finished clearing the plates away, Cid turned to me and said, “So, you’ve decided to rejoin the living.”

“For now.”

“Where are you heading?”

“Reeve’s looking into something for me.”

“Going to Edge, are you? If you don’t mind staying here for the night, I can find business taking me in that direction. I’ll give you a lift, just like old times.”

“Thanks, Cid. But I’m not yet sure that is where I’m heading.”

Cid gave me a hard look. “Well…” He fished a cigarette from his pocket, lit it, and leaned back in his chair. “I might suggest you stop by Edge on your way to wherever you’re going next.”

I remained silent as he took a long drag from his cigarette and blew out the smoke.

“Marlene’s still upset that you missed her birthday party and I can’t say Tifa feels comfortable with the way you just disappeared in the middle of the night. Cloud’s good at burying whatever runs around in his head, but he was none too happy either. At least they don’t seem to have caught on to Yuffie’s ongoing lie.”

Yuffie’s ongoing lie? That surprised me.

Cid coughed out a smoky laugh. “Smart guy like you hasn’t figured it out? Whenever Marlene and Denzel wonder what’s happened to you and Tifa’s too worried to respond, Yuffie calls your phone, wanders off, and fills your voice mail with her bellyaching and pranks. Then she comes back and tells them you’re cleaning up another pile of Shinra’s shit or that you’re doing something that the Turks didn’t have the balls or the manpower to get done. That brat’s been covering your ass. Believe me, I know a false smile when I see one, especially when it’s plastered across her face.”

All of Yuffie’s voice messages replayed in my head. The guilt of making my friends worry battled with the nagging belief that all of them would be better off forgetting me and moving on.

“You know, Vince, even though you’re the one who should be a hell of a lot wiser — and, Vincent, I say this as your friend — you are far worse than Cloud when it comes to disappearing into your own little world that no one else can fucking enter. I sympathize with you — with both of you. What you and Cloud have been through isn’t anything I’d wish on my worst goddamned enemies but, between you and Cloud, you have far less of an excuse for lacking social graces. Tifa has enough problems on her hands so could you at least try to be more considerate around her and those kids. Don’t emulate Cloud’s bad habits. And the next time you see Yuffie, tell her you appreciate the way she stops other people from worrying so much about you that they send out a search party.” Cid stared into my eyes as he took a long drag. He blew the smoke off to the side. “And I fucking mean it. You need to do this.”

“I will.”

“Of course you will.” Cid clapped his hand against the back of my shoulder hard enough that I jolted forward. “Of course you will, Vince. That’s why we put up with you.”

During moments like this I never know how to respond.

Luckily Cid changed the topic. “Shera will get you settled so you can stay the night. Let me go find her and then I’ve got something to show you on my ship.”

“I appreciate the offer but, you’re right. I should rejoin the living for a while. I need to get going.”

“What the hell are you talking about? You just got here. I’ll take you to Edge first thing tomorrow.”

“I appreciate it, but there’s somewhere else I need to go first.”

“It better not be back to that damn—”

“Cid,” I interrupted. “I’m heading to Kalm.”

“Kalm? Why the hell are you going there?”

“My family once owned property there.”

“Really? I didn’t know that was where you’re from.”

“I’m not. I grew up in southeast Midgar before the plates were built.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“My father bought a small house in Kalm when I was young. We went there on vacations to escape the city. I want to see what happened to the old place.”

“Kalm is close enough to Edge. It’s no problem to swing by and drop you there.”

“Cid, thanks for the offer, but I have stops to make along the way. I’ll get there on my own.”

He gave me a stern, closed mouth stare. Eventually he said, “You’re not pulling my leg, are you?”

“I’m not.”

“I guess I can’t convince you to stay until tomorrow.”

“Next time.”

“Alright. Let’s find Shera before you take off.”

 

* * *

 

Kalm had grown larger, but the essential nature of the town hadn’t changed since my childhood. The narrow streets in the center of town weren’t designed for automobiles. People walked to their destinations while occasionally moving to the side as the buzz of small motorbikes echoed between buildings.

People say you can never go back home again. I got lost in the maze of streets trying to find the row house my parents once owned. Were the streets blocking my passage or was our old house on the run? After trudging up and down the same set of side streets a half dozen times, I finally found a familiar landmark: a plaza paved with cobblestones that had a fountain where I used to sit with my sister as we ate ice cream. I’d always order pistachio or strawberry. My sister would get vanilla and chocolate swirl. The ice cream shop was still there but it had expanded into twice the floorspace. Their freezer cases displayed rows of specialty flavors. Mango. Coconut. Papaya. Avocado. Mastic. Ginger. A complete riot of colors and flavors.

Once I stood by the fountain, orienting myself was simple. Two blocks north, turn left, the next right, five doors down on the left, and there it was. The name plate on the door had changed. Either my mother or my sister must have sold it. They probably needed the money when I disappeared a few years after my father died.

As I stood across the street from that old row house, I honestly didn’t know what I expected to find. We came here during holidays and school vacations. Unlike in Midgar, my father remained something of a celebrity in Kalm even after his career faltered when he stopped researching conventional biology at Midgar University and instead got involved with a mess of mystical nonsense after he took research funding from Shinra. Who would have thought some of that trash would actually end up being real? Or sort of real. Real, but not in the way they thought. They had half their facts wrong and they made a lot of mistaken assumptions. And that Promised Land stuff was just a load of crap. Anyhow, my father, a world-renowned molecular biologist, suddenly went galavanting on corporate sponsored archaeological digs looking for mystical artifacts while every respectable person in Midgar called all of it a wacky cult.

Kalm’s library and historical society probably had boxes of photos of my father’s expeditions. I didn’t want to go looking for them right now, but I wasn’t in a hurry to leave Kalm. Whatever they had in their archives would wait for me.

I spent the rest of the day looking for a room I could rent. I wasn’t picky. The only thing I cared about was that it wasn’t on a noisy street. By the end of the day I had signed a monthly lease on a second floor walk up. I handed the owner cash, he gave me a key, and that was that. The apartment was furnished but it wasn’t anything special. Just a kitchen, a living room, a tiny closet of a bedroom, and a small bathroom.

The apartment was a few blocks away from a market when walking east. When going north it was a short walk to a bookstore that devoted half its shelf space to used and hard to find books that had fallen out of print. A couple hours later I returned to the apartment with a bag of groceries and three paperbacks, but rather than make a late dinner and read, I ended up pouring myself a glass of wine and settling in front of the TV.

The evening melted away into nothingness until my phone vibrated as a voice message arrived. When I silenced my phone in Rocket Town, I never bothered to turn the ringer back on. So I pulled the phone out and flipped it open.

Five messages.

 _Wednesday, July 22, one thirty-one p.m. Beep._ Hey, it’s Tifa. I heard you’re on your way to Kalm. Marlene and Denzel are excited to see you. Should we tag along with Cloud or do you want to come down to Edge and stop by?

 _Wednesday, July 22, eleven fifty-nine p.m. Beep._ Vince, do you ever look up at the night sky and think about how dark the universe looks because the stars are so far apart, but when you are close to any one star, everything around you is completely bathed in light?

 _Yesterday, Thursday, July 23, five thirty p.m. Beep._ Vincent. It’s Reeve. One of my employees dug up something that might interest you. It isn’t much but I’ll send you a copy via a private courier once I know where you are. Give me a call as soon as you have a chance.

 _Today, Friday, July 24, two twenty-two p.m. Beep._ Hey, it’s Cloud. I’m out handling deliveries and I have a package for you from Reeve but I don't know where to drop it. Give me a call.

 _Today, Friday, July 24, eleven oh-one p.m. Beep. ……_ Hey. Vince? I need to talk to someone, so, I figured I’d call you. Right? Yeah, I know, what the hell is Yuffie even thinking. She’s just bored. Except — this is the important part — you actually listen and there are things that you understand and if you have something to say, you just say it. No dancing around the obvious or brushing me off or acting false and patronizingly nice. So, look, I had a messed up conversation with my father. They still haven’t found any of those kids who went missing months ago in Wutai. Actually, there are other things going on and everything sucks. I just need to unload on someone. I know you're there and I know that you actually listen to your messages and make outgoing calls. I heard you’re going to Kalm. Are you there yet? Also, Cloud is looking for you but you probably know that by now. And, Vince, listen, if you don’t call me by eleven fifty-nine, I’ll ring you exactly at midnight. At midnight — mwuahahahaha! Midnight, because you, Vincent, are my spooky friend and someone should make a clock that has you and your cape spread out like red bat wings on the clock face and once a day when the hands strike midnight and the clock goes GONG GONG GONG GONG, the whole clock face becomes a red swoosh that spirals around and around like an impossible swarm of something impossible to track and impossible to catch but then in the moment after the twelfth GONG the whole thing settles down and the clock face is back to just you and your cape blowing around until it’s spread out like red bat wings once again. That would be wild. Seriously. Someone should make a clock that does that. So please, pretty please, Vincent, please answer your phone when I call. Okay? And I rarely use the word please, so just answer. Midnight. We’re making a deal here. Talk with you then.

_No more new messages._

I clicked the phone shut and walked to the window. The street below had become silent. Rain had begun to fall. The droplets of water caught below the street lamps became glowing pockets of light spaced along the darkened street.

After switching my phone’s ringer on, I checked the time and plugged the phone into its charger. I changed out of my traveling clothes, took a hot shower, and put on a t-shirt and pajama pants. After I muted the volume on the TV, I picked up my phone. Eleven fifty-nine. Just enough time to grab a blanket and settle into a chair by the window.

 

 


End file.
